Why don’t people get that the conversation is bigger than “Did Bernie say it or didn’t he,” and that pointing to videos where he said encouraging things about their political ambitions to school girls 30 years ago does not address or resolve the issue?
Seems to me the larger question is about how powerful men respond to women who question their veracity or authority.
And Sanders is not unique in his refusal to engage in conversation about his way of responding to accusation or complaint. He reminds me of Bill Clinton, George the First and Second, Ronald Reagan, Nixon, LBJ, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump: huffy refusal to engage with any challenge to his authority.
We are so accustomed to this style-of-self-assertion performed and practiced by politically powerful white men in the USA that we – some of us! – ourselves get angry when these guys are asked to engage in dialogue about any charges against them. Kavanaugh. Not just white men: Clarence Thomas.
“No, I didn’t say it. No, I didn’t do it. How dare you suggest it. How dare you bring it up. Leave the room. If you don’t, I will.”
McConnell dressing down Elizabeth Warren in the Senate! Do you not think that a powerful woman like Warren – or Clinton, or Harris, or Pelosi, or Maxine Waters, or or or – has not spent her life being either tsk-tsked or aggressively dressed down by powerful men? In a particularly huffy, belitting way?
I am so looking forward to the moment in US history when more women than men are in charge of our government. Sure, “Women can be jerks too!”, blah blah blah. But there is a style of contemptuous dismissal that – throughout my lifetime, 60 years – has characterized the way powerful men respond to challenges to their veracity and authority. And it’s a style that has ruinous consequences.